Poll Reveals a Contradictory Portrait Shaded With Promise and Doubt

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Worries, Experiences, Values

Despite their clear achievements and general optimism about their prospects, black men worry more than virtually everyone, the survey found. About four in 10 black men said they are fearful they will lose their job, nearly double the proportion of white men who said the same thing. Even more affluent, better-educated black men are far more anxious about being fired or laid off than their white male and white female co-workers.

More than half of all black men said they fear they or a member of their family will get AIDS, nearly triple the percentage of white men. Six in 10 said they worry that they'll be treated unfairly by the police, and more than a third said they fear they will be arrested -- fears that hardly trouble whites. A good job and education do little to ease these fears: college-educated, upper-middle-class black men were about twice as likely to say they are worried about being arrested, losing their jobs or falling victim to violent crime as upper-class whites.

"With a black man, first you're black. And that carries a lot of baggage -- false and real," said Jerome Tucker, 52, an entrepreneur in Upper Marlboro.

This worries gap sometimes exists in areas where the survey results suggest it shouldn't. When asked if they had been laid off or fired, an equal proportion of higher-income, college-educated whites and blacks reported that they had.

"There is racism in this country," agreed Doug Ford, 42, of Havana, Fla., and a contract administrator for the state's Department of Children and Families, one of the black men interviewed in the survey. "Unfortunately, the majority of black men and women tend to seek out the racial issue where there may not be a racial issue. That comes from an historical consciousness as a black community that now imposes its own burden on black men."

Ford said black men are victimized twice: once by acts of racism that are less frequent today but still too common, and then again by the self-doubts and suspicions that are the living legacy of more than 300 years of legal and de facto discrimination.

For some black men, such concerns are background noise that occasionally prompt a wince. But for others, these suspicions paralyze them into inaction, build barriers where none exist and prevent them from seizing "the real opportunities that are out there," Ford said.

"Worries can become self-fulfilling prophecies. Too many black men go into job interviews convinced they will fail. So they do. They don't try on the job because they believe they won't get promoted. So they don't," Ford said.

But in other areas, the survey suggests that the concerns of black men are not misplaced or exaggerated. Six in 10 black men said a close friend or family member has been murdered. Seven in 10 said someone close to them has gone to prison or jail. AIDS, once a disease almost exclusive to white men, now disproportionately ravages the black community; here the worries gap, if anything, understates the relative incidence of HIV-AIDS among blacks and whites.

Worries about discrimination also are rooted in reality, the survey suggests. One in four black men said they have been physically threatened or attacked because they are black. Half said they have been unfairly stopped by police because of their race, allegations supported by studies that found black men were far more likely than whites to be stopped by police and have their cars searched but no more likely to be carrying contraband.